Some grills are equipped with top and bottom-heating surfaces so that meat placed between the heating surfaces is cooked from both the top and bottom sides of the meat simultaneously to reduce cooking time. Unfortunately, the cooked meat is often tough because fat contained in the meat has insufficient time to dissolve meat fibers to tenderize the meat. Fat also imports flavor to meat and, when meat is cooked very rapidly, the liquefied fat does not have sufficient time to permeate the meat to develop the full flavor. When these grills cook meat such as hamburger, pork chops, and chicken fillets, they are usually cooked done yielding dry meat, which is tough to chew. Sauces are sometimes applied to the meat after cooking to add moisture and enhance flavor. Unfortunately, applying sauces on top of the meat does not enhance flavor throughout the meat adds very little moisture. It is desirable to have a grill that can cook foods quickly without destroying the flavor or drying out the meat.
Some grills drain fat to a dish to keep it away from the meat during cooking. As the fat is removed from the meat during cooking, the meat dries and flavor is lost. To combat this tendency, meat is sometimes marinated in a mixture of vegetable oil and seasonings that are somewhat absorbed by the meat prior to the cooking which may increase the moisture content of the cooked meat. Vegetable oil tends to stay on the surface of the meat where it is removed during the cooking process even before the animal fat is rendered liquid and drained from the meat. Marinade is therefore ineffective in reducing the fat content of the cooked meat. The marinade, however, can enhance the flavor of the meat because the spices and other liquids in the marinade are absorbed deeper into the meat than the oil to enhance flavor.
While the marinade can improve the flavor of the cooked meat, its effectiveness is dependent on the liquid in the marinade displacing the liquid in the meat prior to cooking. The displacement process proceeds very slowly at refrigerator temperatures take several days for maximum displacement which is impractical in a restaurant setting because of the extra refrigerator space required. The process can be carried out faster at room temperature, but leaving meat at room temperature for the time required for the marinade to be effective gives harmful bacteria a chance to multiply. It is desirable to have a grill that can decrease the fat content of the cooked meat while retaining moisture and flavor.
When meat is cooked by heating it from the top and bottom simultaneously, rendered fat accumulates on the cooking surfaces of the grill because less evaporates due to the top-heating surface. Some grills remove the rendered fat by providing grooves in the cooking surfaces so that the fat can drain into a dish. The cooking surfaces are slanted so that the grease flows by gravity for collection. While this process does remove and capture the rendered fat, it is not practical in a restaurant setting because the rendered fat is hot and therefore hazardous. There is an opportunity for the rendered fat to spill or splatter on a worker and there is the possibility that a worker could be injured by steam exiting through the grooves from the cooking process. It is therefore desirable to have grill where grease is easily captured and removed without exposing workers to it while the meat is cooking. Accordingly, it would be appreciated, that it would be highly desirable to have a grill that captures rendered fat for safe and easy removal.
Another problem with grills is that during the cooking process, in addition to fat collecting on the grill, scraps of meat or other cooking debris also accumulate on the cooking surface and must be removed. When left on the cooking surface, the cooking debris will burn importing undesirable flavors to the food cooking. It is therefore desirable to have a simple method of removing cooking debris from the surface of the grill after each use.